Apocalypse: King of Zombies

Logan was speechless.

Heartless bastards, the lot of them!

But there was no time to dwell on it now. With no other choice, he took off alone, sprinting toward Mosca Peak.

The journey wasn’t exactly smooth, but it could’ve been worse. Every now and then, he startled some small creatures—scorpions or venomous bugs bursting out of the sand to ambush him. But he managed to dodge them all, scrambling, tumbling, and leaping his way past danger by the skin of his teeth.

Roughly six hours later, the horizon finally shifted. A jagged range of barren mountains came into view—no grass, no trees, just endless stretches of dull yellow and blood-red rock.

Legend had it those red stones weren’t even from Earth. Supposedly, this was a hotspot for meteorite crashes.

The area was littered with twisted, alien-looking rock formations, crawling with palm-sized spiders, their hairy bodies enough to make your skin crawl just looking at them.

Logan shot past them like a gust of wind, not daring to slow down.

He glanced up at Mosca Peak ahead, and for a moment, he felt like crying.

”Maybe I never should’ve gone to Albuquerque. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be in this mess, stuck in a hellhole like this.”

”And Ethan... that asshole actually splashed me with Black-Skin Zombie blood. What the hell was he thinking?”

He silently prayed that this mission wouldn’t be the end of him—that somehow, he’d make it out alive.

With a running leap, Logan vaulted onto a massive boulder, officially entering the Mosca Peak zone.

As an agility-enhanced Awakener, his movements were sharp and fluid, like a top-tier parkour athlete. He bounded from rock to rock, scaling the terrain with practiced ease.

But it didn’t take long before he stirred up the local wildlife.

A dry, scraping sound echoed from the cracks between the rocks—claws grinding against stone, growing louder and more frequent. One by one, mutated venomous scorpions began crawling out.

They came in all shapes and sizes—some black, some dark red. The small ones were the size of a hand; the big ones, as large as truck tires. But every single one had a deadly stinger, glistening with poison.

”Shit!”

Logan’s heart jumped into his throat. He wasn’t about to get poisoned again. He sprang upward, scrambling for higher ground.

Below him, the scorpions swarmed, a writhing mass of chitin and venom.

He had no choice but to keep climbing, leaping from ledge to ledge.

A quick glance behind confirmed it—there was no going back.

And every crevice he passed seemed to be hiding something nasty. Spiders, snakes, all lying in wait to ambush him. He narrowly dodged several attacks, each one a close call.

Scanning the cliffside, he spotted a flat stone ledge jutting out from the mountain. It looked stable, and more importantly, there didn’t seem to be any monsters nearby.

”That looks promising…”

He launched himself into the air, Spider-Man style, grabbing the edge of the ledge with one hand and flipping his body up and over. He landed smoothly.

He looked around—no monsters. So far, so good.

But the chaos he’d stirred up below hadn’t gone unnoticed. The creatures he’d disturbed were still screeching and hissing, and now they were starting to crawl toward the ledge.

And then, from the distance, the Black-Skin Zombies arrived. They’d made it to Mosca Peak.

They were climbing and leaping just as skillfully as Logan, their movements eerily agile.

The local monsters sensed the intrusion.

The mutated scorpions immediately turned their attention to the zombies, leaping onto them and sinking their fangs in deep.

Some of the scorpions used both their pincers and stingers, jabbing into the zombies’ flesh. Thick, black blood oozed out, reeking like rotting meat.

”Raaaghhh!”

One of the Black-Skin Zombies let out a guttural roar.

But they weren’t going down easy. Mindless and driven by pure instinct, the zombies fought back with savage fury. They didn’t care about the damage—they just ripped the scorpions off and started eating them alive.

The two sides clashed in a brutal frenzy—zombies versus monsters, a full-on bloodbath erupting across Mosca Peak.

”Yeah, that’s right. Tear each other apart, you dumbasses,” Logan muttered, crouched on the ledge, watching the chaos unfold below. With no monsters coming after him for the moment, he was more than happy to sit back and enjoy the show.

He couldn’t help but feel a little proud of himself. ”Damn, I’m a genius,” he thought. ”Crisis averted.”

But then—

A massive shadow silently descended from the cliff wall behind him.

It was a spider. A giant one. The size of a compact car, its body covered in thick, bristly hair. A steel-like thread of webbing trailed from its abdomen, lowering it silently behind Logan.

Its eight eyes gleamed in two vertical rows, and its grotesque mandibles twitched hungrily.

Logan suddenly felt a chill crawl up his spine. Something was watching him. Something dangerous.

He turned around—and froze.

”Holy shit!”

The words burst out of him as every hair on his body stood on end. A cold sweat broke across his skin.

The spider let out a shrill screech and lunged.

A wave of hot, rancid air hit Logan in the face.

No time to think.

He dove to the side, narrowly dodging the attack, and scrambled up the steep rock wall beside him.

The spider swung after him, using its web to chase him like some nightmarish pendulum.

Logan cursed under his breath. He’d just thought he was in the clear—and now this monster shows up?

No choice but to keep running.

...

Off in the distance at the base of Mosca Peak, Ethan and the others strolled up casually—until they caught sight of the chaos ahead.

A full-blown war had broken out. Mutated beasts were locked in a savage brawl with the Black-Skin Zombies. Up on the cliffs, a lone figure was darting between rocks, scrambling for his life as a massive spider chased him down.

”Damn,” Ethan muttered, genuinely impressed. ”Guy’s got some serious parkour skills.”

Behind him, Chris watched the scene unfold and felt a cold sweat trickle down his back.

Thank God I didn’t draw the short straw. If I’d been the one to lure the monsters, I’d be dead meat by now.

The battle on the mountain was reaching a fever pitch. Blood of all colors splattered across the jagged rocks, only to be quickly baked dry by the relentless sun, leaving behind dark, crusty stains.

Mosca Peak was crawling with mutated creatures—hundreds of thousands of them. The fighting had stirred up even more, and they just kept pouring out from every crevice and cave.

But the Black-Skin Zombies didn’t know fear. They kept tearing through the monsters, devouring everything in their path. It was a full-on death match—no retreat, no surrender.

”Jesus, both sides are insane,” Chris muttered, eyes wide.

”So... what now?” Mia asked, glancing at Ethan.

”We move. While the zombies are keeping the beasts busy, this is our shot to get up the mountain.”

Ethan had been watching the battlefield closely. The zombies were fierce, sure—but they were outnumbered, badly. Some of them were already collapsing under the weight of venomous scorpions and snakes coiled around their limbs, getting dragged down and swallowed by the monster horde.

If they waited too long, the zombies would be wiped out—and then they’d have to face the full force of those creatures themselves.

Now was the time.

”Let’s go!”

Mia and the others nodded, drawing their weapons, ready for whatever came next.

Still, a question lingered in all their minds—what the hell was at the top of this mountain that made it worth all this?

They picked a path with fewer monsters and began their ascent.

Mia took the lead, as always, charging ahead without hesitation.

She leapt from rock to rock, and whenever a creature lunged at her, she met it with a clean, precise slash—cutting it down in a single blow.

Every strike was surgical.

But the mountain wasn’t done with them yet. From the cliffs above, snakes and scorpions began to rain down like a living storm.

Behind her, Brandon activated his ability—Blood Burst.

The moment the creatures hit the air, they froze mid-fall—then exploded in a spray of gore.

”Damn, that’s badass,” Thomas said, eyes wide.

”Seriously,” Jenny agreed, ducking as a chunk of monster meat flew past.

The creatures at the base of Mosca Peak weren’t high-level, and they couldn’t do much to slow the team down. They carved their way up the slope like a hot knife through butter.

But halfway up the mountain, a familiar voice rang out—desperate and panicked.

”Help... help me!”

They turned toward the sound.

There was Logan, clinging to a ledge, his lips swollen like sausages, flailing and shouting for dear life.

...